Post by Tori C.

Y’all… I’ve worked in TA for too many years now and I can count on my hands the number of roles I’ve personally supported that had 100+ qualified applicants. Do those jobs exist? Absolutely. Usually highly fungible roles with massive talent pools (think entry SDE) and easy apply buttons getting hit like a dopamine slot machine. But somewhere along the way LinkedIn convinced everyone every single job posting has 4,000 applicants and recruiters are sitting on mountains of perfect candidates like dragons guarding treasure. Meanwhile I currently have multiple open roles that aren’t even getting ONE applicant a week. And here’s the other part nobody talks about: applicant count ≠ qualified applicant count. Every posting gets: * people “shooting their shot” * career pivots with zero adjacent experience * applicants whose mom told them they can do anything (supportive queen behavior honestly) * people applying to Senior/Principal roles because they once attended a meeting near a similar team. (No joke I had an equine dentist apply for a quality support engineer role this week.) A posting showing 150 applicants does not mean there are 150 viable candidates. There are still MANY jobs, honestly probably the majority; that will never see north of 100 applicants. The internet just made everyone believe every application is entering the Thunderdome.